Crossing 181st Street

I’m sitting in traffic behind a DSNY truck.
A half-busted dresser is hanging out the back,
along with some tatters of plastic that used to house someone’s trash.
It’s funny how something no one wants can be so interesting to look at,
or maybe I’m just bored.
Behind me someone is reading:
OBX; Free Lori Berenson

Finally, we move forward,
through what I do not know.
Something has happened,
and even though we were in the midst of it,
I have no idea what “it” was.
Perhaps it was just volume,
or bad timing on the lights
or some disturbance that was cleared away out from under my very nose
but beyond my line of vision.

We have no idea what lies before us,
if indeed anything does;
if we are going nowhere even though we have the light,
or if we are making some kind of progress just by staying where we are.
It is impossible to know if the problem is everything
or nothing at all:
if everything is at a stand-still,
or if there’s nothing there,
or if that nothing is the very obstacle itself,
a vacuum waiting to suck in whatever comes next.
Imagination is the only substitute now for ignorance of the facts.

We wander forward,
and I wonder
if this is what it was like at yam ha’suf:
all mud-and-muck,
and not a miracle in sight.

For all that I can really see
is the back
of the guy
in front
of me.


3/7/07
© Elizabeth Lorris Ritter